The Art
by Beliel
Summary: A scene from the series cannon short, unusual. Reflective.


Heh. I know, I should be working on Shadow Rising, but there was a challenge and this just kinda... Pounced me.

Pairings: None

Rating: G

Warnings: Bad dress sense. Nostalgia.

**The Art**

The old man mopped the top of his head with a graying rag, his bald crown shining in the light of the mid afternoon sun. His fringe of white hair, which was usually unnaturally frizzy and gravity-defying, was drooping in the heat, and he could feel his neatly trimmed beard fraying. He moved the rag to swipe at the sweat on his neck, grinning like a fool as he surveyed the reason his hair and clothes were oil-stained and disarrayed.

"Heh. You always were a handful." The elderly man said fondly, looking at the giant machine that sat, placid and white, on the deck of his ship. The Tallgeese was, by now, only in need of a new coat of paint, to be as good as new.

Scrambling up the side of the large mobile suit, more agile then a man his age had any right to be, Howard was a splash of color against the white and grey of the mobile suit; his garish T-shirt—pink, with yellow palm trees and a number of recent oil stains—and khaki shorts and sandals out of place against the serious, military lines of the Tallgeese.

Howard sat down on the giant machine's left shoulder, letting his legs swing over the edge, sandals half falling off his feet as he kicked his heels a few times against the neo-titanium, enjoying the sound the metal made each time his heels tapped against it.

Looking down the completed form of the Tallgeese Howard had to bite down on a surge of nostalgia. Taking of his sunglasses, the old engineer allowed himself a long, lingering look at the machine he was currently perched on.

"Who would have thought we'd meet again, eh, Tallgeese?" Howard murmured, a faint, wry smile twisting his lips, his fingers tracing the metal plating absently. How many years had it been? They all seemed to blend together. But he still remembered the last time he'd seen the Tallgeese, when he's first created the machine... Days and nights spent over blueprints, designs, preliminary frames, all scrapped... Until at last, the Tallgeese has been born. The morning he'd finished the design, hyped up on coffee and no sleep, Howard had felt like a god, going over the specs for creation so perfect he could taste the machine's power, just looking at the lines on the page.

They hadn't even finished creating the Tallgeese when the higher ups decided that the design wasn't cost effective, had decided on a dumbed-down version of the suit. Howard remembered the profound pang he'd felt when he'd been forced to give up his creation, not even fully complete.

It's been an interesting shock, to learn that Zechs Merquise had finished his work, had completed the Tallgeese and was using the mech. It'd been even more interesting to witness that battle, and when Zechs had ended up stranded on the river bank, Howard at last found he couldn't resist the call of his creation, and had picked up the machine, as well as its pilot.

And now here he sat, comfortably conspicuous on his creation's shoulder, after two straight days of repairs and tweaks, and just a little exploring, to see if they'd followed his design correctly. It was an odd feeling, the swell of pride, joy, appreciation, and just a bit of jealousy. The first three, because his design still outclassed even the latest model MSs, the last, because he hadn't been the one to finish the work. Merquise had taken on the half-finished project, and though the foundation was Howard's, the engineer had to acknowledge that the finished work was Zechs'.

And the finished work was beautiful. The work of art, done in metal and wiring, made for speed and power and destruction, was everything Howard had hoped it would be. It was the art of the machines, really, that had drawn him to the Tallgeese design project, and it was the art of it that drew him to pick up Zechs and the suit on that riverbank. It was the art, he imagined, that was likely to get him into plenty of trouble in the future, but he just couldn't resist it; the metal, the oil, the gears and engines, that was his medium, it called to him, and he always answered.

He always would.


End file.
